research questions genocide

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• 05 April 2024

After the genocide: what scientists are learning from Rwanda

• Nisha Gaind

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A 1994 photograph shows the altar in Ntarama Church, where more than 5,000 people were murdered during the genocide against the Tutsi. Credit: Lane Montgomery/Getty

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• Published: 11 April 2019

The long-term health consequences of genocide: developing GESQUQ - a genocide studies checklist

• Jutta Lindert 1 , 2 ,
• Ichiro Kawachi 3 ,
• Haim Y. Knobler 4 ,
• Moshe Z. Abramowitz 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ,
• Sandro Galea 5 ,
• Bayard Roberts 6 ,
• Richard Mollica 7 &
• Martin McKee 6  

Conflict and Health volume  13 , Article number:  14 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Genocide is an atrocity that seeks to destroy whole populations, leaving empty countries, empty spaces and empty memories, but also a large health burden among survivors is enormous. We propose a genocide reporting checklist to encourage consistent high quality in studies designed to provide robust and reliable data on the long term impact of genocide.

An interdisciplinary (Public Health, epidemiology, psychiatry, medicine, sociology, genocide studies) and international working committee of experts from Germany, Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom used an iterative consensus process to develop a genocide studies checklist for studies of the long term health consequences.

We created a list of eight domains (A Ethical approval, B External validity, C Misclassification, D Study design, E Confounder, F Data collection, G Withdrawal) with 1–3 specific items (total 17).

The genocide studies checklist is easy to use for authors, journal editors, peer reviewers, and others involved in documenting the health consequences of genocide.

Genocides have brought immeasurable suffering to millions of people in the 20th and the early years of the twenty-first century. [ 1 , 2 ] They have attracted the attention of researchers from a range of disciplines, including epidemiologists, historians, political scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, demographers, and others, with genocide studies emerging as a distinct body of scholarship. Each discipline offers important perspectives on a phenomenon whose horror is beyond the imagination of most people. The impact of genocide continues long after the killing has ended, leaving lifelong scars on survivors and, potentially, their offspring. [ 2 ] Yet, as revealed in a recent systematic review, this research has taken a wide variety of approaches and produced heterogeneous, and, in some cases, conflicting findings, suggesting a range of consequences between severe long term impact and no impact. [ 2 ] This conflicting evidence leads to several conclusions.

First, genocide - as defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9th of December 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260 (III, article 2) - can take many forms, from the semi-organized chaos of Rwanda systematic murder of Jews by Nazis and/or their allies in the Genocide termed the Holocaust, with differences in exposures to mass atrocities (e.g. duration, types of genocidal acts). The Convention defines genocide as an attempt “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Genocidal acts include “killing members of the group; [and] causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, and deliberately inflicting “conditions of life, calculated to bring about [a group’s] physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. [ 3 ] These definitions suggest a breadth of exposures that can be associated with genocide. Table  1 lists those events that have been designated officially by the United Nations as genocides, as well as the range of estimates of those killed and the percentages of the target populations affected.

A second concern relates to methodological differences among studies. For example, studies reviewing the mental health impact of genocides have investigated a variety of outcomes, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia [ 4 , 5 ], suicide [ 6 , 7 ], post-traumatic stress as well post-traumatic growth. Some studies documented a negative impact, while others found resilience or no association notwithstanding immense cruelties to which survivors had been exposed. [ 8 ] Some of this variability may be due to the methodological challenges inherent in conducting studies on populations affected by genocide. Some are common to any epidemiological research and include recruitment bias, measurement error, and the need to adjustment for potential confounding. Attempts to attribute symptoms to the experience of genocide may be complicated by confounding factors unrelated to the genocide, such as discrimination in another country due to migration or poverty. [ 9 ] Other factors, however, are specific to genocide research. One is memoralization, whereby groups valorize, marginalize, or disable acts of remembrance, or forgetting. [ 10 , 11 ] Anthropological research has reported how some genocide survivors or children of survivors challenge the pathologizing construct of long term impact of genocides. It can be politically expedient to pathologize the long term consequences of genocide, or, conversely, to deny the long term impacts of genocides as part of an attempt to relieve the perpetrator from responsibility for having committed genocide. Disorders associated with genocide are therefore subject to the influence of various interests, institutions, and political interests.

The need for clear, transparent, and reliable reporting of research has led to important initiatives such as the Strengthening Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology Statement (STROBE). [ 12 ] The STROBE statement, published in 2007, is an evidence-based 22 item set of recommendations for reporting observational studies (cohort studies, case-control studies, and cross-sectional studies) and has been credited with improvements in quality of reporting. [ 13 ] However, the STROBE statement is designed to apply to all observational studies, [ 8 ] and it does not adequately capture some of the key challenges inherent in post-genocide research.

Seeking to address this shortcoming, an international group of experts (JL, MZA, HJK, SG, RM, BR, MMcK, IK) with a specific interest in genocide and health worked together on a systematic review. [ 2 ] Important gaps in STROBE that were specific to studies of genocide and health were identified and agreement was reached that an extension of STROBE was warranted. Thus, the QUALITY ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR QUANTITATIVE GENOCIDE STUDIES (GESUQ) initiative was established as an international collaborative project to address these issues. Herein, we propose recommendations for reporting genocide and related research.

First, we searched for any existing reporting guideline covering long term impacts of genocide. Second, we sought relevant evidence regarding the quality of reporting. Neither search yielded any results. Third, we identified experts (i.e., methodologists, psychiatrists, epidemiologists, and genocide experts) who could advise on potential sources of bias, from relevant genocide projects and reference documents. They were then asked for recommendations. Fourth, the group met in person and via Skype meetings to agree the wording of the statements. Stakeholders reviewed the statements and provided feedback. The final checklist and this explanatory document were drafted by the three members of the working committee. During two face-to-face and three skype meetings, members of the group discussed the input received and prepared new versions that were circulated until consensus on all items was reached.

Items in the GESUQ checklist

The complete GESUQ checklist is provided in the Additional file 1 . In the following sections we explain the rationale for choosing items A-H in GESUQ.

A. Ethical approval

Research on the impact of genocide must adhere to same ethical standards that guide all other research. [ 14 ] This includes that all research participants have the capacity to provide informed consent. As in other research, investigators should maintain the principles of approval of research by institutional review boards (IRBs) respecting not only confidentiality and privacy but the importance of expertise in genocide research within the research team, including the specific genocide-related challenges that exist. Among these challenges are extra provisions to minimize harm to human subjects (e.g. the potential for retaliation from those who perpetrated the genocide), and extra steps to provide medical resources / referral to people still suffering from lingering mental health effects. Given the particular risk of causing distress by asking questions about past events in this vulnerable population there is a need to ensure mechanisms for referral information for mental health support. These ethical questions are especially difficult in situations in which genocide perpetrators, genocide victims, and genocide bystanders are forced to live together even after the genocide (e.g. in the case of Rwanda [ 15 ]).

B. External validity and selection bias

In genocide studies as in other epidemiological studies, attention to sampling methods is crucial. Often in the early aftermath of genocide, health studies either comprise only convenience samples or clinical samples (populations that manifest some kind of pathology, i.e. post-traumatic symptoms) and have sought and obtained care. This is understandable given the challenges of recruitment but is likely to introduce bias as such participants go through several stages of selection and thus, both in practice and theory, may differ from participants drawn from random samples of those exposed. Random sampling should therefore be used. Where this is not possible, analyses should include appropriate weighting. This can avoid the challenge of biased estimates of the incidence and prevalence of certain disorders (e.g., Posttraumatic Stress Disorder). Given the difficulty of random sampling in many settings, alternative methods such as respondent driven sampling may be useful adjuncts. [ 16 ]

It is important to recognize the inevitable scope for survivor bias, both in terms of surviving the events in question and their sequelae. Consequently, and to a greater degree with genocide than many other exposures, any sample will not be representative of all those exposed.

C. Avoiding misclassification

Any flaw in measuring exposure, outcome, or covariates can overestimate or underestimate the true value of the association. [ 17 , 18 , 19 ] This is a challenge in many areas of epidemiology, but is especially so with genocide. Does exposure include direct and indirect exposure (such as the death of family members or friends, and if so, in the presence or absence of the subject)? How is the duration of exposure measured? Reporting of genocide exposure should include the nature, intensity, and length of exposure. This assessment of exposure could draw on approaches adopted in other areas of epidemiology, such as the job-exposure matrix used in occupational epidemiology. [ 20 , 21 ] Accordingly, assessment of exposure should be quantified systematically. For example, one could inquire about direct personal experiences of genocide (e.g. whether one’s relatives were killed). But in genocide research it is also relevant to assess exposure to genocide even if someone was not directly affected - i.e. there may be spillover effects of genocide in a community. [ 22 ] In genocide research both direct and indirect exposures are of interest. Research on the impact of genocide on subsequent generations creates additional challenges, in measuring both the nature and timing of exposure. [ 2 , 5 ] Our guidelines seek to guide researchers to be explicit about why the exposure measurement was carried out in a certain way.

Genocide studies seek accuracy in reporting the incidence, prevalence, and burden of disease so avoiding diagnostic errors is crucial. It is essential to understand the psychometric properties of health measures used among those affected by genocide. Expressions of suffering due to genocide may differ by populations. In the area of mental health, the DSM-5 [ 23 ] emphasizes the need for measures that capture culturally grounded concepts of distress, [ 24 ] something that is largely missing from genocide studies so far.

D. Study design

Most genocide studies will, inevitably, be retrospective and observational, e.g. case-control or cohort studies. The selection of controls is a major challenge as they should resemble, as closely as possible, those who experienced the genocide without themselves being exposed. The objective of genocide studies therefore is to find an unexposed control group that resembles the exposed group as closely as possible. For example, in studies of the health effects of the Holocaust, investigators have compared Jews who emigrated to Israel before and after the Holocaust. However, even this design poses challenges, since there will be many unobserved factors that could confound the comparison being made, e.g. those who escaped before the Holocaust may have had more extensive social networks to help them escape, and stronger social networks would make such individuals more resilient to adverse mental health effects.

Research undertaken in Israel has used the National Population Register. This is a unique resource for genocide studies. [ 4 ] However, should such a situation arise in the future, the ability to use a similar resource will depend upon the nature of consent given at enrolment, the degree of anonymisation, and the data protection laws in place in the country concerned.

F. Confounders

If the question of interest involves identifying the causal effects of genocide experience on mental health outcomes, the investigator must identify (and control for) factors that influence the probability of both the exposure and the outcome being studied. For example, in a study of exposure to genocide and the outcome of poor mental health, socioeconomic disadvantage could be a confounder. Someone disadvantaged in this way may be less able to escape the that would make a person less able to escape the direct and indirect effects of genocide, for example because of fewer material resources. However, there is also a well-recognized association between disadvantage and adverse mental health outcomes. It is good epidemiological practice to control for confounders but it is also important not to over control. Thus, genocide is often the final end-result of many decades (perhaps even centuries) of unjust treatment of a particular group in society. Hence, a confounder such as “low socioeconomic status” may itself represent an effect of the underlying injustice which preceded genocide. For example, immediately before and during the Holocaust, many Jewish children and adolescents were excluded from studies in public schools. One would not control for “confounding” by educational attainment in this instance, because interruption of schooling is part of the exposure (the Holocaust) that we are trying to understand. Likewise, the experience of escaping from the genocide constitutes a part of the exposure.

There are several approaches to addressing these issues, including the thorough review of the literature and use of methods such as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), [ 25 ] multivariable regression to help adjust for potential confounders and structural equation modelling (path analysis). [ 26 ]

F. Data collection methods

Data can be collected in ad hoc surveys or, in rare cases, as with the Israeli National Population Register, from routine sources, as noted above. Valid and reliable assessment of exposures and outcomes requires carefully developed instruments, which have ideally been evaluated in different cultural settings. The attributes (e.g. recall period, question/response format) and mode of administration (e.g. interviewer-, self-administered) of existing instruments are extremely varied and many have not been evaluated for use in different cultural contexts or age groups.

In summary, there are substantial challenges in epidemiological studies of survivors of mass atrocities, crimes against humanity, and genocide. However, data are needed to better serve this population. The GESUQ guidelines are a first step to better understand the mental health impact of mass atrocities, crimes against humanity, and genocide. These proposed guidelines are specific to observational genocide research and serve as starting point for improving epidemiological research on the impact of violence on health. GESUQ was created as a guide for authors, journal editors, peer reviewers, and other stakeholders to encourage researchers to improve the quality and completeness of reporting in genocide and war epidemiology. To our knowledge, our guidelines are the first to have been proposed for use specifically in genocide studies. As with other reporting guidelines, these complement the instructions in editorial and review processes to ensure a clear and transparent account of the research conducted. Experts we contacted generally welcomed the initiative and provided constructive feedback. The checklist will subsequently be translated into other languages, and disseminated widely. Ongoing feedback is encouraged to improve it.

While GESUQ represents our best attempt to reflect the interest and priorities of stakeholders and the interested public in genocide research, we recognize that the methods used in observational health research are changing rapidly, and the availability of different types of data for such research is expanding. For example, mobile health applications (mHealth apps) are becoming widely available for smartphones and wearable technologies. While there is limited experience so far with these data sources in genocide research, we anticipate rapid growth in the near future. Additionally, health care providers in for instance Israel offer good registry data on more outcomes than government data that can be linked to Holocaust exposure without sample selection.

The nature of genocide poses some obvious limitations on the conduct of associated research. First, while we have described this instrument as one for use in genocide studies, the international community has shown a great reluctance to use the term “genocide” because of the implications, in particular the “responsibility to protect”. However, the issues we have discussed in developing this instrument will be equally applicable in many situations involving large scale killings that are not subsequently labelled as genocide. Second, it will continue to be extremely difficult to collect data in real time and any attempt to do so would face a myriad of methodological and ethical challenges, as was apparent in studies seeking to quantify the death toll in post-invasion Iraq. Consideration of these issues goes beyond the scope of this paper.

Conclusions

We have created GESUQ in the form of a checklist, trying to take account of and learn from existing guidelines. While we anticipate that GESUQ will change as research methods evolve, these guidelines should encourage better reporting of research over the coming years. With implementation by authors, journal editors, and peer reviewers, we anticipate that GESUQ will improve transparency, reproducibility, and completeness of reporting of research on genocide and health and, especially, much-needed research on evidence-based interventions for genocide affected populations.

Abbreviations

Prof. Bayard Roberts

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Directed acyclic graphs

Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Genocide Studies

Prof. Haim Y. Knobler

Prof. Ichiro Kawachi

Institutional review boards

Prof. Jutta Lindert

Mobile health applications

Prof. Martin McKee

Dr. Moshe Z. Abramowitz

Prof. Richard Mollica

Socioeconomic status

Prof. Sandro Galea

Strengthening Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology Statement

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Linda Wulkau for helping to edit the manuscript.

The study was done without any additional funding.

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Contributions

JL drafted the manuscript together with MM. All authors contributed with methodological expertise to the project. All authors contributed in writing. All authors added content and specific examples. All authors discussed the guidelines and decided upon standards. Furthermore, Jl, HYL, MA and TV provided expertise in the field of mass trauma and epidemiology. All authors revised and edited the manuscript critically for important intellectual content of the material. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jutta Lindert .

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Additional file 1:.

Quality assessment tool for quantitative genocide studies. (DOCX 32 kb)

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Lindert, J., Kawachi, I., Knobler, H.Y. et al. The long-term health consequences of genocide: developing GESQUQ - a genocide studies checklist. Confl Health 13 , 14 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-019-0198-9

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Problems and Challenges in Genocidal Research

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• Elisabeth Hope Murray 2  

Part of the book series: Rethinking Political Violence series ((RPV))

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All social scientists face challenges to discovering the answers to the questions they ask. As a genocide scholar, some of my challenges are unique to my field, but many are problems faced and overcome by scholars in various disciplines, showing once again that, though we deal with evil and hatred, we too are mere scholars. Thus, this first chapter simply reviews the challenges of my work - aside from the emotional and moral challenges - and looks at the theoretical and practical methods I have used to overcome them as best I can. Specifically, questions of ideological radicalisation in states moving towards genocide present two overarching problems. The first challenge is simply how to appropriately study ideology; the second challenge is how to appropriately compare cases across space and time.

God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world.’ — Francis Bacon (1628: 15)

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Murray, E.H. (2015). Problems and Challenges in Genocidal Research. In: Disrupting Pathways to Genocide. Rethinking Political Violence series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137404718_2

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• How is genocide different from mass murder? Or terrorism?
• How are genocide and other acts of mass violence humanly possible?
• What choices do people make that allow collective violence to happen?
• What makes it possible for neighbor to turn against neighbor?
• What are the different reasons sited for leading to genocide? (ie. poverty, religious or ethnic differences)
• Who decides if it is genocide or civil unrest?
• Is there any remedy for genocide?
• Can the United States take an active role in preventing genocide?
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What have we learned about the risk factors and warning signs of genocide?

The study of the Holocaust raises questions about how the world can recognize and respond to indications that a country is at risk for genocide or mass atrocity. While each genocide is unique, in most places where genocide occurs, there are common risk factors and warning signs. 

Explore this question to learn how to identify these signs in today's world, as well as how they were present during the Holocaust and other genocides. 

See related articles for background information related to this discussion.

• warning signs

Risk Factors and Warning Signs

Genocides have continued to happen since the Holocaust. For example, genocide occurred in Rwanda in 1994, and at Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995.  

Every genocide is unique, but most genocides share some things in common. Just as there were key conditions that made the Holocaust possible, there are identifiable risk factors for genocide today. Some of the most common are:

• Instability :  One of the strongest signs of the potential for genocide is large-scale instability. Instability can result from armed conflict or developments that threaten a regime’s power, such as a coup, revolution, or uprising. Instability may increase the risk of genocide for several reasons. Leaders may feel threatened, citizens may feel insecure, and the law may be suspended or neglected. In such environments, leaders and citizens may be more willing to consider violence to protect themselves and what they value.  
• Ideology : Genocide often happens when leaders believe that some people in the country are inferior or dangerous because of their race, religion, or national or ethnic origin. In Rwanda, leaders of the Hutu majority believed that the Tutsi minority wanted to dominate the Hutus. In Bosnia, Serb leaders believed that the Muslim Bosniaks were a threat to the freedom and culture of the Orthodox Christian Serbs.
• Discrimination and violence against groups : Where genocide occurs, there usually have been earlier acts of discrimination, persecution, and violence against people who belong to a certain group. In Rwanda, Tutsis faced various forms of discrimination. There were several incidents of mass violence against Tutsis in previous decades. In addition, Bosnian Serb forces committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity against Bosniak and Croatian communities before committing genocide at Srebrenica.

The factors that can put a country at risk for genocide may exist for a long time without leading to genocide. Some of the warning signs that the risk for genocide may be increasing include:

• Dangerous speech : Before and during genocide, there is often widespread hate speech. Such hate speech promotes the idea that members of a certain group are evil and dangerous. When this speech comes from influential leaders and is spread through government propaganda or popular media, it can condition listeners to believe that violence against the group is justified. It may also incite some people to commit violence against members of the group. The leaders of genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia all promoted hate speech against the victims.
• Armed groups : Before committing genocide, leaders often create special groups that share their ideology and goals. For example, Hitler established the SS ( Schutzstaffel ; Protection Squadrons) in Germany in 1925. Leaders provide these groups with weapons and military training. They use them to commit violence against members of a particular group. During the Rwandan genocide, the Interahamwe militia led the killing in certain areas.
• Armed conflict : Genocide most often happens during armed conflict. The genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia happened during times of civil wars. The Holocaust and the genocide in Armenia occurred during international wars. Genocide can result if one or both sides of the armed conflict expands its targets from enemy soldiers to civilian groups seen as supporting the enemy. Mass atrocities against civilians who belong to a certain group can escalate violence and increase the risk for genocide by deepening hostility between groups. This can provoke acts of revenge, attract recruits to the warring sides, and provide leaders with an excuse to conduct an all-out attack on members of a group.

The specific factors that led to genocide in Europe, Rwanda, and Bosnia were very different. In each case, however, recognizable risk factors and warning signs were present. All those who organize and carry out genocide rely on the active help of countless officials and ordinary people as well as those who stand by, witness, and sometimes benefit from the persecution and murder of their neighbors.

Early Warning

Today, the international community makes efforts to watch for the risk factors and warning signs of genocide. Recognition of these signs can help the world act to prevent before killing begins. Because genocide usually occurs within the context of other mass atrocities, prevention efforts focus not only on genocide but also on the other acts defined as “atrocity crimes.”  Genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are today together commonly referred to as "atrocity crimes" or "mass atrocities."

As we learn more about the risk factors, warning signs, and triggering events that have led to genocide in the past, we are also learning ways to prevent it in the future. Designed by the Museum and Dartmouth College, the Early Warning Project gives us a first-of-its-kind tool to alert policy makers and the public to places where the risk for mass atrocities is greatest. Together, people around the world can call for action before it’s too late.

Related Articles: What is Genocide?

How Were the Crimes Defined?

What is Genocide?

Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin

Introduction to the Definition of Genocide

Related articles: risk factors and warning signs.

Nazi Propaganda

Defining the Enemy

Incitement to Genocide in International Law

Related articles: cases, genocide timeline.

The Rwanda Genocide

Rwanda: The First Conviction for Genocide

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Critical thinking questions.

• How might citizens and officials within a nation identify and respond to warning signs? What obstacles might be faced?
• How might other countries and international organizations respond to warning signs within a nation? What obstacles may exist?
• How can knowledge of the events in Germany and Europe before the Nazis came to power help citizens today respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocity?

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Genocide Studies Program

Crimes against humanity.

A Crime Against Humanity has been defined as “a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.” Such crimes include the murder of political or social groups that are unprotected by the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention.    More …

Genocide, Comparative

Comparative genocide is a branch of genocide studies that seeks to identify differences and similarities across genocidal (and similarly situated non-genocidal) episodes, and thus to isolate some of the more essential features of genocide that recur in all or most cases. More …

Genocide, General

Considers themes that address the meaning, history, and occurrence of genocide. More …

GIS & Remote Sensing

Geographic Information Systems  (GIS) make it possible to interrelate spatially multiple types of information assembled from a range of sources. Remote sensing is the measurement of object properties on Earth’s surface using data acquired from aircraft and satellites.    More …

Justice & Prosecutions

The jurisprudence of genocide, at both the national and international levels. More …

Mass Atrocities in the Digital Era  (MADE)

The MADE Initiative is at once a turn to the reality that much of the subject and methodology of genocide studies has undergone a dramatic change in the 21st Century and a return to the core princieples of the GSP and its roots within the Cambodian Gencoide Documentation Project.  More …

Genocide scholarship is often motivated by the hope that future genocides can and will be prevented.  Some of that work specifically analyzes the efforts and strategies to do so. More …

The  GSP’s  Rescue page is dedicated to documenting and publicizing acts of resistance, protest and rescue that combat genocidal injustice and violation of human rights.     More …

Discussions and resources addressing domestic resistance to genocide specific locations. More …

The GSP and the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University co-sponsor the Holocaust Trauma Project, directed by Dr. Dori Laub.  Dr. Laub, M.D. is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New Haven, Connecticut.  His work on trauma includes studies of the  multifaceted impact of the Holocaust on the lives of survivors and that of their children, as well as  on survivors of the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and of other genocides.    More …

Truth Commissions

Truth Commissions hold an increasingly prominent place among the institutions of transitional justice that are employed in the wake of mass violence.  Where implemented, they stand as an important – though inevitably imperfect – source of information about periods of mass violence (including genocide), as well as a barometer of post-conflict social reconstruction. More …

Examinations of violations of the laws of war in civil and international conflict, which may or may not overlap with genocide and/or crimes against humanity. More …

130 Genocide Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best genocide topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 interesting topics to write about genocide, 📌 simple & easy genocide essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on genocide, ❓ genocide research questions.

• Holocaust and Bosnian Genocide Comparison The current paper aims to compare some of the most notable genocides in history, the Holocaust, and the Bosnian mass murder in terms of their aims, death tolls, tactics, and methods.
• Genocide Factors in Rwanda and Cambodia By the start of the last decade of the 20th Century, animosity between the Hutus and the Tutsis had escalated with the former accusing the latter of propagating socioeconomic and political inequalities within the country.
• Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide Another difference between the two terms is that genocide is the systematic and widespread destruction of particular segment of the population or specific group of people, ethnic cleansing on the other hand is understood as […]
• The Problem of East Timor Genocide To understand the peculiarities of genocide against the native people at the territories of East Timor, it is necessary to focus on examining such aspects as the causes for the genocide, the techniques used by […]
• Argumentative Essay: Uighur Genocide A total of 149 nations, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China, ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
• The Global Impact of Genocide: The Socio-Economic and Political Spheres According to the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Article III, the following acts are punishable: “genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement to commit […]
• “Night” by Elie Wiesel: Holocaust and Genocide Given that the events are seen through the eyes of the young person, the major emphasis is placed upon the main character’s perception of the violence and death taking place around him and gradual loss […]
• The History of the Genocide in the Rwandan The Rwandan civil war led to the signing of the Arusha Accord that compelled the Rwandan government, which Hutu dominated, to form a government of national unity by incorporating marginalized Tutsi and the Hutu who […]
• Legal Standard of Genocide: The Enduring Problem From the perspective of the legal standard of genocide accepted in the world law, the events in Turkey correspond to the definition of the mass killing of one people by the other one.
• Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution Genocide targets an individual’s identity to eliminate a group of people, in contrast to war, where the attack is generic, and the goal is frequently the control of a specific geographic or political region.
• Genocide Intervention and Prevention The question of what needs to be done in order to prevent and address genocide appears to be a challenging one. The notions of genocide intervention and prevention refer to efforts to protect individuals and […]
• Physical and Cultural Genocide Policy Toward Native Americans Thus, the US government pursued a two-pronged policy of physical and cultural genocide toward Native Americans to acquire their lands and, later, to suppress their resistance. The US government planned to civilize the Native Americans […]
• Nazism and Genocide as Social Evils The article by Jacob Tanner, “Eugenics Before 1945,” explores the interaction of science and social theory, mainly hereditary, used as the foundation for social improvement.
• Difficulties in Preventing the Occurrence of Genocide The 1994 Rwanda genocide that took place within the course of a hundred days was ethnic in nature as it involved a premeditated annihilation of the Tutsi minority by the Hutu government.
• Crimes Against Humanity – Genocide However, the most captivating event as the movie progresses is the reluctance of the international community to intervene to quell the raging storms.
• Armenian Genocide Overview According to Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of the United Nations, genocide is a process of killing members of a religious, racial, ethnic, and national […]
• Darfur: The New Face of Genocide The situation in Darfur raises new questions about events that constitute genocide as these crimes fit “uncomfortably within the definition of genocide”.
• Genocide: Darfur and Rwanda Cases When examining the case of Darfur, it can be noted that three specific factors prevented “true justice” from being administered, these encompass: the abstained votes from the U.S.and China in voting for a resolution for […]
• The Darfur Genocide 2003: What Really Happened in Sudan This creates a substantial factor in the realms of Darfur Genocide. Precisely, this research will involve problem development, research design, data collection, data compilation, data analysis, conclusion, and presentation of results to the concerned audience.
• Hotel Rwanda’: The 1994 Rwandan Genocide’s History Besides, the assassination of the 1994 president, who belonged to ethnic Tutsi, was one of the main causes; the Hutus accused the Tutsis of having been responsible for the president’s assassination.
• Investigating the Religious Motif in Genocide The research is focused on genocide of the Jews in Nazi Germany before and during the World War II and genocide of the Armenians in Ottoman Empire in 1915.
• Rwanda Genocide: “Shake Hands with the Devil” by Dallaire Romeo This paper will examine the issue in highlighting the theme that the main purpose of the book was to let the world know of its callousness and lack of precaution while the horrible and immoral […]
• Genocide in Darfur Region: The Actual Cause of Sudanese Genocide The true cause of Sudanese recent genocide in Darfur region is the same as were the causes for other genocides, which have taken place in Africa, after this continent has been liberated of “white oppression” […]
• Yanomami: The Gold Rush and Genocide The Yanomami of Brazil and Venezuela can be considered the arena of aggression and conflict in Amazon; this interaction resulted in the global tragedy taking the lives of the whole communities.
• Crime of Genocide: Justice and Ethical Issues The conflict was declared as genocide for the first time by the USA government, which gave a permit to ‘the UN Security Council to refer a case to the International Criminal Court.’ 2 Therefore, the […]
• Armenian Genocide and Spiegelman’s “Maus” Novel Tracing the similarities between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide is important to the discussion of Maus as a literary piece.
• Is Western Intervention in Genocides Justified? These include specific evidence of a crisis that is accepted by the global community, there is a lack of practical alternatives, and the use of force during the intervention must be limited to providing relief […]
• Genocide in Eastern Turkey An example of such events is the genocide and deportation of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire, since it ended in the numerous deaths; however, it was a victory for some people and a disaster for […]
• Civil Liberties vs. American Cultural Genocide Thus, when one group’s idea of the good life requires others to sacrifice their freedom, negative outcomes, such as protests or violent response, are inevitable.
• Genocide and the Right to Be Free The focus on the order is the main duty of a policeman even if the order is based on organizing the raid to find the red-haired men as the representatives of the minority.
• Virginia Holocaust Museum’s Genocide Presentation In terms of the educational objective, I aimed to learn the aspects and details of the Holocaust through the artifacts, objects, and things that belonged to people experiencing these events’ atrocities.
• Analysis of the Documentary ”Genocide” According to the documentary, genocide is the outcome of mass hysteria. After that, the international community will be able to have an impact on the decisions of political leaders.
• Genocide in the “Ghost of Rwanda” Documentary In the colonial process, the Hutus were discriminated by the colonial power, which was Belgium with the help of the Tutsi.
• Comparison of Genocide in Rwanda and Nazi Germany The proponents of the emancipation movement called the Rwandan Patriotic Front returned to the country in the fall 1990 to live within the population of Tutsi.
• Social Darwinism and Nazi Genocide Ideology It is possible to trace the way the Jews settled and assimilated in western countries and the way the ideas of Social Darwinism affected the society to see the link between Nazi genocidal ideology and […]
• Rwanda Genocide: Process and Outcomes It will describe the Tutsi-favored political system and land distribution system that contributed to the occurrence of the Genocide. The Europeans were of the opinion that the Tutsi did not originate from the region.
• Genocide’ Causes and Elimination Therefore, in this paper, we dwell on the theories and significant instances of genocide so that to prove that the global eradication of ethnicity is the payoff of psychological disparities both on a personal and […]
• Stories of Rwanda’s Recovery From Genocide Today, the killers and the victims of the genocide live side by side, and the government focuses on finding the effective measures and legacies to overcome the consequences of the genocide and to state the […]
• The Rwandan Genocide: Hutus and Tutsi Ethnic Hatred People have always believed that the ethnic hatred between the Hutus and the Tutsi was the core cause of the genocide.
• What Could Be Worse Than Death? Genocide Genocide is worse than death because of its horrific consequences, such as destruction of human life and the emotional and psychological trauma experienced by victims. Unlike the killing of the Jews and the Armenians, the […]
• The Genocide of East Timor As far as genocide was proclaimed an international crime, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was established. In our days, the execution of women is recognized to be one […]
• Australian Aborigines Genocide The rules and policies produced by the international laws state that as long as there is intent to systematically get rid of a group of people and there is the act itself, it is genocide.
• Human Sanctity: Darfur Crisis The writer recommends paying attention to the development of strategies for paying the compensation for the Darfur victims, dismantling systems of violence, supporting the United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur peace initiative and regulating […]
• In-class Reaction Paper: Rwandan Genocide The book offers a detailed description of the events that took place in the 1994 Rwandan genocide as told by the survivors of the massacre.
• Darfur Genocide Indicatively, this was before the period of the start of the Darfur genocide. Particularly, this relates to the development of the war within the area.
• Genocide in Rwanda: Insiders and Outsiders The paper will look into the Rwandese pre genocide history, factors that led to the genocide, the execution of the genocide and impacts of the genocide.
• The Concept of Genocide In recent past, daily media broadcasts were covered with terrible news of genocide going on in Bosnia-Herzegovina, genocide in Rwanda where more than one million people were killed by government forces as well as parliamentary […]
• Doris Bergen: Nazi’s Holocaust Program in “War and Genocide” The discussion of the Holocaust cannot be separated from the context of the World War II because the Nazi ideology of advancing the Aryans and murdering the undesirable people became one of the top reasons […]
• Sexual violence as a tool of genocide It is disgusting to observe the expert say that this act is a ‘cultural behavior’ and that it is amorally correct.’ The author does a good analysis by relating the origin of sexual violence and […]
• The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide deals with one of the most debatable issues of the history of the twentieth century, i.e.
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• The Bosnian Genocide in Behind Enemy Lines, a Movie by John Moore
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• The Justification for Genocide, Terrorism, and Other Evil Actions
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• The Stanford Prison Experiment Was Not A Physical Genocide
• The Rwandan Genocide and the Role of the United States in the Failure of the UN to Keep Peace in Rwanda
• Why the Holocaust in Considered Genocide
• The UN & US Mishandling Of The Rwandan Genocide
• The Path of Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire
• The Demographic and Socio-Economic Distribution of Excess Mortality during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda
• Supporting the Investigation of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
• The Representation of War and Genocide in The Farming of the Bones, a Book by Edwidge Danticat
• The Role of Colonial Influences in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
• The Economic Effects of Genocide: Evidence from Rwanda
• Uncovering the Truth Behind the Armenian Genocide
• The Lack of Involvement by the Government and International Community in the Genocide in Darfur
• The Misconceptions and the Outside Influences of the Genocide in Cambodia
• The Ukrainian Genocide: The Worst Tragedies In Ukranian History
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• The Bosnian Genocide And How It Changed Society
• The Cruelty of Humans in the Rwandan Genocide, the Human Rights Broken, and Its Impact on Rwanda and the World
• The History of the Armenian Genocide after the Fall of the Ottoman Empire
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• The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings. Genocide or Not
• The International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
• To What Extent Were Women’s Roles Affected By The Rwandan Genocide
• What Is The True Meaning Of Genocide
• The Ottomans And The Armenians: Casualties Of War Or Genocide
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• Was the Main Reason for the Genocide in Cambodia?
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• Did the United Nations and the International Community Fail to Prevent the Rwandan Genocide?
• What Inspired Hitler and the Nazis to Start WWII and Attempt Genocide Against the Jews and Other Inferior Races?
• Were the English Colonists Guilty of Genocide?
• Was the Ukrainian Famine Genocide?
• How Does Kocide Affect the North Korean Genocide?
• Why Didn’t the United States Intervene to Prevent the Genocide in Rwanda?
• Did the British Commit Genocide in the Second Boer War?
• How Could Rwandan Genocide Be Justified?
• Why Was Nothing Done to Stop the Genocide in Rwanda?
• How Did Immaculee Ilibagiza Survive the Genocide?
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• How Has the Genocide Impacted Rwandan Society?
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• Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?
• What Barriers Are There to the Effective Prevention of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity?
• When Did the Nazis Decide on Genocide?
• What Are the Political, Historical, and Social Contexts in Which Genocides Occur?
• In Which Genres and Through Which Channels Is Genocide Represented? And How So?
• What – If Any – Is the Connection Between Modernity and Genocide?
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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "130 Genocide Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 26, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/genocide-essay-topics/.

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HIST W335 History of Genocide

• Finding Books
• Armenian Genocide
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• Primary Sources for Other Genocides
• Develop a Research Question
• Primary Sources
• Cite Sources
• Scholarly vs Popular
• Thesis Statements
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What Is a Thesis?

A  thesis  is the main point or argument of an information source. (Many, but not all, writing assignments, require a thesis.)

A strong thesis is:  

• Arguable:  Can be supported by evidence and analysis, and can be disagreed with.
• Unique:  Says something new and interesting.
• Concise and clear:  Explained as simply as possible, but not at the expense of clarity.
• Unified:  All parts are clearly connected.
• Focused and specific:  Can be adequately and convincingly argued within the the paper, scope is not overly broad.
• Significant:  Has importance to readers, answers the question "so what?"

Crafting a Thesis

Research is usually vital to developing a strong thesis. Exploring sources can help you develop and refine your central point.

1. Conduct Background Research.

A strong thesis is specific and unique, so you first need knowledge of the general research topic. Background research will help you narrow your research focus and contextualize your argument in relation to other research. 

2. Narrow the Research Topic. 

Ask questions as you review sources:

• What aspect(s) of the topic interest you most?
• What questions or concerns does the topic raise for you?   Example of a general research topic:  Climate change and carbon emissions Example of more narrow topic:  U.S. government policies on carbon emissions

3. Formulate and explore a relevant research question.  

Before committing yourself to a single viewpoint, formulate a specific question to explore.  Consider different perspectives on the issue, and find sources that represent these varying views. Reflect on strengths and weaknesses in the sources' arguments. Consider sources that challenge these viewpoints.

Example:  What role does and should the U.S. government play in regulating carbon emissions?

4. Develop a working thesis. 

• A working thesis has a clear focus but is not yet be fully formed. It is a good foundation for further developing a more refined argument.   Example:  The U.S. government has the responsibility to help reduce carbon emissions through public policy and regulation.  This thesis has a clear focus but leaves some major questions unanswered. For example, why is regulation of carbon emissions important? Why should the government be held accountable for such regulation?

5. Continue research on the more focused topic.

Is the topic:

• broad enough to yield sufficient sources and supporting evidence?
• narrow enough for in-depth and focused research?
• original enough to offer a new and meaningful perspective that will interest readers? 

6. Fine-tune the thesis.

Your thesis will probably evolve as you gather sources and ideas. If your research focus changes, you may need to re-evaluate your search strategy and to conduct additional research. This is usually a good sign of the careful thought you are putting into your work!

Example:   Because climate change, which is exacerbated by high carbon emissions, adversely affects almost all citizens, the U.S. government has the responsibility to help reduce carbon emissions through public policy and regulation. 

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The Armenian Genocide Research Program of the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA

• From the Director

The Armenian Genocide Research Program (AGRP) was established within the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA in early 2022. Led by Taner Akçam, Ph.D., the AGRP engages in research and scholarly activities pertaining to the study of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire during the early 20th century.

Below is a collection of articles, transcripts, videos, and media coverage of Dr. Akcam's speaking engagements. 

Transcripts and Media Coverage

Open Letter to University of Pennsylvania Administrators: Request for Reconsideration of Disbanding the Gaza Solidarity Camp (April 30, 2024)

Princeton Armenian Society hosts first Turkish scholar to acknowledge Armenian genocide - The Daily Princetonian (April  26, 2024)

Taner Akçam Speaks on Armenian Restitution -  The Armenian-Mirror Spectator  (April 16, 2024); Click here for a transcript of the lecture . 

Historian Taner Akcam: “If Turkey wants to create a democratic society, it must recognize the Armenian Genocide” - Interview with the Armenian Museum of Moscow about Dr. Akcam's new book, "The Hundred Years of Apartheid," the blockade of Artsakh and why Turkey should become a democratic country - January 31, 2024. 

Possibilities of Creating a Post-Recognition Armenian Reparations Movement - Opening remarks, "What's Next?: Armenian Genocide Restitution in the Post-Recognition Era" Conference - March 25, 2023 (click here for more information)

Goals of the Promise Institute Armenian Genocide Research Program  - July 14, 2022 (click here for more information)

Armenian Genocide remembrance events held in Providence, R.I. with Dr. Taner Akcam  - The Armenian Weekly (May 3, 2023)

Killing Orders: Talat Pasha's Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide

(On June 14, 2018, the American University of Armenia (AUA)’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences hosted Dr. Taner Akçam, who delivered a public lecture on Turkish denialism of the Armenian Genocide and the killing orders in Ottoman Interior Minister Talat Pasha’s telegrams.)

A Look Back, A Look Ahead: A Conversation with Prof. Taner Akcam

(On April 12, 2022 Dr. Taner Akçam engaged in a conversation with NAASR Academic Director Marc A. Mamigonian about the evolution of Akçam’s work, the history and development of Armenian genocide studies, the challenges facing the field, and his plans for the future in his new role as the inaugural director of the Armenian Genocide Research Program at UCLA.)

1923-2023: Reflecting on a New Republic in its Centennial

(On December 17, 2022, Dr. Taner Akçam spoke in a Zoom panel discussion about the founding premises of the Turkish Republic and the ways in which it created structural inequalities. Dr. Akçam spoke about the significance of rethinking Turkey in 2023 on the centennial of its founding, as well as its connection to New York Times Magazine’s The 1619 Project.)

Dr. Taner Akcam: Evaluating the Centennial of the Republic and Democracy

(Dr. Taner Akçam engaged in a conversation with freelance journalist Ezo Özer about the denial of the Armenian genocide and the nature of democracy and human rights in Turkey. In the first part of the interview, Dr. Akçam detailed the primary reasons for Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide. In the second part, he attributed factors such as the historic exclusion of Christian groups (i.e. Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Kurdish Alevis) from being considered equal Turkish citizens to inequalities embedded in Turkey’s founding in 1923. Dr. Akçam stressed the need for a new Turkish origin story that includes the persecutions, deportations, and massacres of different ethnic-religious groups.)

Part 1: Why is the Armenian genocide so persistently denied?

Part 2: This state is built on destroying its own citizens

January 5, 2023: A Conversation with Turkish Activists on Hrant Dink's Assassination and the Necessity for a New Republic

Liberation and Establishment: Interview with Dr. Taner Akcam by Aris Nalci (ArtiGercekTV)

(In a January 8, 2023 interview with journalist Aris Nalci, Dr. Taner Akçam discussed the founding premises of Turkey and how they created a basis for enduring structural inequalities.)

Coordinating Council of Armenian Associations of the Côte d'Azur Conference featuring Dr.  Taner Akçam  - December 13, 2023

Promoting understanding of Armenian history - Conference by Dr. Taner Akçam featuring his book, One Hundred Years of Apartheid. 

Interview with Dr. Taner  Akçam with Brigitte Leloire Kérackian for Radio Armenia  - December 14, 2023

  Articles

Top-Down and Local Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Role of Security Concerns and a Century of "Accumulated Experience" by Taner Akcam. Published online: September 25, 2022

When Was the Decision of Annihilate the Armenians Taken? by Taner Akcam. Published online: July 17, 2019

Archives & Projects

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Vahakn N. Dadrian Archive Project

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Inaugural Director, Armenian Genocide Research Program

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The Right of the First Night and Sexual Violence Against Armenian Women in the 19th Century

Imagining the Past: Atrocity, Trauma and the Armenian Genocide

Empire of Questions: The Late Ottoman Empire and Dersim '38

Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces

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Locusts of Power: Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East

NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: "The Hundred Years of Apartheid" by Dr. Taner Akçam

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Genocide Research Paper

View sample genocide research paper. Browse other  research paper examples and check the list of history research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a history research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The equivalent of what we now call genocide has occurred throughout much of human history, but the term was not coined until Raphael Lemkin applied it to the Nazi occupation of Poland and subsequently to the Holocaust.

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The word genocide is a modern term for an ancient practice. It was first coined by a Polish jurist, Raphael Lemkin, who sought to describe the Nazi occupation of Poland as one designed to eliminate Polish identity. Lemkin’s initial work is sometimes erroneously linked to the Holocaust. Nevertheless, it was the Holocaust and its aftermath in the postwar United Nations that led to the formulation of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which remains the principal accepted definition of the practice. Article II of the convention (Chalk and Joassohn 1990, 44–49) defines genocide as follows:

—In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring the children of the group to another group.

While this formulation is not without some controversy, it is plain that massacre, a practice most commonly associated with genocide, is only one aspect of its perpetration. This is because genocide is essentially a crime of identity: Its objective is to eliminate some form of cultural identifier rather than, necessarily, to slaughter those who identify with it. Historically, however, the most direct means of achieving a genocidal objective has been mass murder, although other, more indirect means have also had currency throughout history. Moreover, one controversial aspect of the convention is its omission of political groups. This reflects its origin as a document negotiated in the senior echelons of the United Nations, and has led some scholars to seek to supplement the term genocide with further terms, including “politicide” (Harff and Gurr 1988, 359–371) and “democide” (Rummel 1994).

It is worth noting that the disappearance of any culture, or cultural group, is not in itself necessarily evidence of genocide. In world-historical terms, cultures have their own lives. The processes of decay, decline, and assimilation are often unforced, driven by voluntary cultural shifts in response to the realities of social and linguistic hegemonies. Over centuries, for example, the dominant Zoroastrian faith of Iran has given way to Shia Islam; languages like Oscan, Lycian, Coptic, Sogdian, and Breton gave way to Latin, Greek, Arabic, Pathan, and French.

As a comprehensive phenomenon, genocide is more modern than it is ancient. Cultures like the Assyrians and Hebrews talked genocide in the ancient world, but lacked the technology to achieve it. The Book of Joshua makes claims about the utter destruction of the peoples of pre-Hebrew Palestine which cannot be borne out archaeologically. In the same way, the Annals of the Assyrian kings make extravagant claims about the utter annihilation of peoples who were not, actually, annihilated. The ancient Greeks, with the more limited objective of the elimination of rival city-states, were more successful, inventing the practice of andrapodismos: the slaughter of the adult males of a city and enslavement of the remainder. This was visited by the Crotonians against the Sybarites; the Athenians upon the Melians and Scionians; the Thebans upon the Plataeans; and Alexander’s Macedonians upon the Thebans. The Romans inherited this practice, killing and enslaving all of the Carthaginians and sowing their fields with salt (Leadbetter 1999, 272–274).

These massacres remain the exception rather than the rule in antiquity. There were social identifiers for ancient people, as for modern, which invited genocidal intent. What prevented a wider and more savage manifestation of genocide was the lack of requisite technology to carry out such acts. The principal identifiers that have emerged over time are religion; imperial identity; nationalism; political identity; and ethnicity, sometimes nuanced as race.

Genocide and Religion

Religious conflict has been common in world history. From time to time, these conflicts have been genocidal, particularly with the emergent dominance of exclusivist monotheistic religions in the Middle East and Mediterranean from the fourth century CE onwards. Traditional polytheistic religion was, nevertheless, not immune from the genocidal impulse, principally because it was embedded in the ideological structures of the state. In the third century, for example, the Roman state made a systematic attempt to eliminate the Christians and Manichaeans, who threatened the religious foundations of imperial ideology. Likewise, in the eleventh century the Hindu king of Pandya in India sought to eliminate the Jains, impaling over eight thousand of them.

While such instances of genocidal practice are linked to traditional pagan and polytheistic religions, a significant impetus for genocidal violence also came with the emergence of Christianity as a hegemonic religion in Europe. This violence initially focused on the emergent Islamic communities of the Middle East. The crusading movement, in particular, was principally directed at the Muslim communities of the Levant. While this aspect of the crusading movement failed to eliminate Islam in Palestine, other crusades had more murderous success. The most notable of these was the crusade against the Albigensians, or Cathars, a Manichaean community centered in the Languedoc region of southern France. This crusade took the form of a series of military campaigns conducted between 1208 and 1226, which were marked by atrocity and indiscriminate massacre, notably the massacre of the entire population of Beziers in 1209. Even after the conclusion of military hostilities, the Inquisition continued the work of eliminating Albigensianism.

The Inquisition, founded largely as a consequence of the emergence of Catharism, was the principal genocidal agency in Europe until the Reformation. It hunted Hussites, witches, Waldensians, and, from time to time, Jews. The Reformation entrenched religious diversity in Europe, but genocidal massacres still occurred from time to time, most notably the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Protestants (Huguenots) in 1572. Christians could be victims too. The Jesuit missionaries based in Japan were expelled in the early seventeenth century and Japanese Christian converts were tortured and killed, with the result that Christianity was eliminated from Japan until the Meiji period.

More recently, the emergence of an intolerant version of political Islam has seen eliminationist assaults on the Baha’i community of Iran. Almost inevitably, genocide on religious lines is associated with the use of religious language by political authorities. This reflects the fact that genocide is a crime almost exclusively committed by those who have political power to use violent means over those who do not.

Genocide and the Imperial State

Genocidal practice has been inherent to imperial powers from the earliest times. While most empires have been consciously multicultural, they are all established and maintained by violence, a class of which is designed to eliminate particularly recalcitrant opponents in order both to prevent further resistance and also to terrorize the remainder into acquiescence. The Persians destroyed Miletus during the Ionian Revolts; Alexander obliterated the city of Plataea; the Romans targeted and sought to eliminate the Druids; in the fourteenth century Timur (Tamerlane) established an empire across Eurasia based upon the terror inspired by genocide. In his campaigns in India, he slew all of the inhabitants of Batnir and Meerut, marking his progress with vast pyramids of heads. He marked his 1399 capture of Delhi with four of these, at each corner of the city. He punished the rebellion of Isfahan in 1387 by massacre, and a tower of seventy thousand skulls was piled up. Genocidal massacres were also employed in his capture, variously, of Baghdad, Damascus, and Tiflis (Katz 1994, 94).

The impact of the imperial encounter between the Old World and the New was immediately genocidal. In 1519, Hernan Cortes slaughtered or deported all of the inhabitants of the town of Cholula, and in 1521, he marked his recapture of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan by the massacre of its surviving inhabitants, in the course of which an estimated 100,000 people were slain (Churchill 1997, 98). The muskets and cannon of the conquistadors were accompanied by the smallpox pathogen. While there is some (relatively late) evidence of the deliberate infection of indigenous people with smallpox in North America, such an act was largely unnecessary. Smallpox, typhus, and other imported diseases wrought havoc among the indigenous peoples, leading within a few decades to unsustainable population levels (Stannard 1992, 102–112; Churchill 1997, 129–157). In respect to the European discovery of the New World, particularly the confrontation with its indigenous peoples, it has been argued that “the sixteenth century perpetrated the greatest genocide in human history” (Todorov 1984, 5).

Colonial Empires

The establishment of the New World empires of Spain, Portugal, France, and Great Britain marked a major expansion—indeed a globalization—of European power. They are also a clear instance of small emigre elites subjugating a vast indigenous population. This was a process facilitated by disease, but also marked by an especially ruthless brutality toward indigenous peoples which can only be described as genocidal. There was resistance, but the strength of native arms was sapped by disease and thwarted by technology. Arrows and spears might match muskets, cannon, and rifles in occasional skirmishes, but they could not win the long wars of attrition waged in North and South America, and in Australia, by colonial occupiers. Many of these policies have persisted until relatively recently. In Australia and elsewhere, the genocidal practices which marked the frontier conflict between indigenous people and British colonists resulted in massacres and campaigns of extermination. These were succeeded, during the course of the twentieth century, by a more subtle policy of marginalization and the forced removal of children to “breed out the color.” This policy even persisted after 1967, when indigenous Australians were granted full citizenship rights, and was the subject of a major investigation in Australia in the 1990s (Tatz 2003, 67–106).

In a similar way, the economic development of the Paraguayan countryside was accompanied, in the 1950s and 1960s, by the slaughter of indigenous Ache (or Guayaki) people. The Paraguayan government, charged with genocide in 1974, pleaded in its defense to the U.N. Human Rights Commission that no genocide had been committed since there had been no intent to eliminate the Guayaki as such, merely the pursuit of an economic objective, which had been hindered by people who happened to be Guayaki.

Colonial occupations in those instances were genocidal in nature principally because the occupying colonizers were also settlers. In other places, colonial empires took a different form, with minority colonizing elites dominating majority indigenous populations. In such places, the colonists’ principal interest lay in the economic exploitation of the colony and its peoples. In these circumstances, genocide is less likely to occur although, as Jean-Paul Sartre has argued (1968), the imbalance in the power relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is frequently maintained by the practice of genocidal massacre.

There were a number of spectacular examples of this in Africa during the colonial period. In the Belgian Congo, the quota system for the harvest of wild rubber imposed upon the inhabitants by the personal administration of Leopold II was genocidal in impact rather than intent. The devastation it wrought upon the peoples of the region led, in 1907, to the Belgian Parliament humiliating their own monarch by the formal annexation of the Congo, thereby replacing Leopold’s authority with their own.

A clearer and more unambiguous case is the response of German authorities to the uprising among the Herero people of Namibia in 1904. Initially successful because of the group’s numerical superiority, the Herero rebellion soon faced a counterattack under the command of General Lothar von Trotha. The general so disposed his forces as to drive the Herero into the waterless Omaheke desert, within which they were contained until they perished of thirst and exposure. In 1903, there were eighty thousand Herero; a few years later, a scant fifteen thousand remained. This was a clear attempt at colonial pacification through genocide, and was followed up by a similar assault on the Nama people, of whom over half were slaughtered between 1907 and 1911.

Just as the process of colonization generated genocidal conflicts, so did decolonization. In many cases, colonial borders were drawn by the colonial powers without regard to the cultural and religious identifications of the subject populations. As these colonial boundaries have persisted beyond the colonial period, genocidal civil conflict has frequently been the result. In the Sudan, a bitter genocidal conflict between the Arab Muslim north and the Christian/ animist Bantu south persisted for many decades, and was noted for an attempt by the north to subjugate the south by the imposition of permanent famine conditions. A similar state of affairs now prevails between ruling northerners and the peoples of Darfur in western Sudan.

Genocide and the Nation-State

The problem that decolonized regions face, and that has resulted in genocide, is the need for colonial territories to reinvent themselves as nations. The nation is the ideal form of post-Enlightenment state, created in Europe to redefine polities that had been created by centuries of dynastic competition. The nation-state emerged after the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and was affirmed by French Revolution, which first embodied and articulated a clear nationalist principle. Nations construct themselves through a matrix of linguistic, religious, and cultural identifiers.

Inherent Genocides

Sometimes those identifiers are inherent. The most obvious of these is heredity, or “race.” It was a particular concept of race used by the Nazis to construct their peculiar vision of Germany. They used it, more specifically, to seek to eliminate all Jews. The Holocaust has a particular standing in the history of genocide since the victims were defined biologically, and so could not thwart the Nazi perpetrators by conversion. It also meant that the perpetrators were compelled, by the logic of their own vision, to slaughter all of their victims. The most sophisticated technology (for its day) was employed: railways to transport the victims; gas chambers to kill them en masse. Alongside that, more rudimentary technologies were also employed: shooting; starvation; exhaustion; disease.

The Nazi vision of a biological utopia led them also to target groups other than Jews. Famously, they sought to slaughter all the Roma and Sinti (“Gypsies”) despite their Aryan origins. They also targeted Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and (what Nazis thought of as) similar groups of adherence, although in these cases, it was possible to escape death through a denial of the relevant identity. Alongside these directed policies was also the genocidal policy adopted in Poland which led Raphael Lemkin initially to devise the term. The Nazis were ultimately responsible for the deaths of an estimated 5 to 6 million Jews, including 3 million Polish Jews; as many as 3 million Soviet prisoners of war; up to 2 million Christian and other (non-Jewish) Poles; somewhere between a quarter to 1.5 million Roma and Sinti (Gypsies); 200,000–300,000 people with disabilities; 100,000 Communists; 10,000–20,000 homosexuals; and up to 5,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Nazi policies have rarely been imitated, although it is arguable that the ethnic identifiers used in the genocides in Burundi and, later, Rwanda, are of a similar type. The situations in these states are more or less identical to one another. Both are postcolonial states; both were occupied by the Germans, and then, as mandatory power, by the Belgians, who continued the German policy which privileged one ethnic group, the Tutsi, usually in a minority, at the expense of the other, the Hutu. This has resulted in a postindependence history of mutual massacre. Between 1972 and 1975, at least 100,000 Hutu were killed in Burundi by the (all-Tutsi) army; in 1994, approximately 1 million Tutsis were murdered in Rwanda by Hutu Interehamwe militias. The Rwandan genocide at least was a last-ditch attempt by Hutu hardliners to prevent the implementation of a compromise peace (the Arusha accords) reached with the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front. Along with ethnic Tutsi, the victims included moderate Hutus, the Hutu president who had signed the accords, Juvenal Habyalimana, the prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and other supporters of ethnic compromise.

Adherent Genocides

Nation-building can also result in what might be called adherent genocides. This occurs particularly in cases where the nation is aligned with a particular religious or ideological view. A prime example of this is the Terror during the French Revolution, when as many as twenty thousand people were executed because they either were, or identified with, members of the old French aristocracy. In the same way, the late Ottoman state, struggling to redefine itself as ethnically Turkish, and deeply mistrustful of the Christian Armenians straddling the Russian border, slaughtered over 1.5 million Armenians during the latter half of 1915. It was possible for Armenians to escape death, through conversion to Islam, and some accepted this road to survival, thus rendering this a genocide more based on adherent than inherent qualities.

The most notable case of adherent genocide is the Soviet Union under Stalin. Stalin routinely used genocide as a tool of state control, attacking both social classes (kulaks) and ethnic groups (notably the Ukrainians and Tatars) through a combination of massacre, deportation, and enforced famine. There is no accurate estimate of the total number of Stalin’s victims although it can reasonably be assumed that there were in excess of 30 million.

In the late 1970s, a peculiar case of adherent genocide occurred in Cambodia. There, a militant Stalinist regime led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, sought to reimagine the country as a series of peasant collectives. Any person not meeting the state’s definition of a Cambodian peasant was liable to be slain: intellectuals (often perceived simply as people who wore spectacles), the Muslim Cham people, Buddhists, and all non-ethnic Cambodians. Over 1.5 million people were killed before the slaughter was brought to an end by the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime at the hands of the intervening Vietnamese.

Genocide Denial

One ongoing feature of the historiography of genocide is the unwillingness of many perpetrator states, or their successors, to accept the fact that genocide has occurred. The Turkish state, for example, has long denied the fact of the Armenian genocide, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. Neo-Nazis and various sympathizers deny the Holocaust, and colonial successor nations are frequently unwilling to acknowledge the more sordid deeds committed by their pioneers. It is both embarrassing at a time when new nations are seeking to construct more heroic foundation narratives, and it is legally problematic since it opens up the possibility of prosecutions, lawsuits, and compensation claims.

Genocide in the Future?

The 1990s were a particularly bloody decade. The breakup of the former federated republic of Yugoslavia resulted in a series of Balkan wars and two converted genocidal assaults, one on the Bosnian Muslims, the other on the Albanians of Kosovo. These, together with the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, resulted, first, in the creation of the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and, later, in the 1998 formation of an International Criminal Court for Genocide and Major Human Rights Violations. The latter formally came into operation in 2002; it provides the first international standing court through which both survivors and bystander communities can seek redress from perpetrators. As of 2010 it has 111 member countries, although China, India, Russia, and the United States have not joined.

The conditions that generate genocide still exist in states and parastate organizations (that is, liberation and paramilitary organizations), although a number of early warning systems are in place to try and detect potential genocides before they occur, and there is greater opportunity for judicial redress after the fact. Despite the fact that the Genocide Convention demands external intervention to prevent it, there must first be a willingness to recognize and name genocide wherever it occurs, and this is not always freely forthcoming.

Bibliography:

• African Rights. (1995). Rwanda: Death Despair and Defiance (2nd ed.). London: African Rights.
• Arendt, H. (1951). The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace.
• Chalk, F., & Jonassohn, K. (1990). The history and sociology of genocide: Analyses and case studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Charny, I. (Ed.). (1999). Encyclopedia of genocide. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio.
• Churchill, W. (1997). A little matter of genocide: Holocaust and denial in the Americas 1492 to the present. San Francisco: City Lights.
• Fein, H. (1993). Genocide—a sociological perspective. London: Sage Publications.
• Harff, B., & and Gurr, T.R. (1988). Toward an empirical theory of genocide and politicides: Identification and measurement of cases since 1945. International Studies Quarterly 32(4), 359–371.
• Jonassohn, K., & Bjornson, K.S. (1998). Genocide and gross human rights violations in comparative perspective. London: Transaction.
• Katz, S.T. (1994). The Holocaust in historical context: Vol 1. The Holocaust and mass death before the modern age. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kuper, L. (1981). Genocide: Its political use in the twentieth century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Leadbetter, B. (1999). Genocide in antiquity. In I. Charny (Ed.), Encyclopedia of genocide (pp. 272–275). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio.
• Rummel, R. J. (1994). Death by government. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications.
• Sartre, J.-P. (1968, February). On genocide. Ramparts, 37–42.
• Stannard, D. (1992). American Holocaust: The conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Tatz, C. (2003). With intent to destroy: Reflecting on genocide, London: Verso.
• Todorov, T. (1984). The conquest of America: The question of the other. (Richard Howard, Trans.). New York: HarperPerennial.
• Totten, S., Parsons, W.S., & Charny, I.W. (1997). Century of genocide: Eyewitness accounts and critical views. New York: Garland Publishing.

ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER

Researching Methods: Indigenous Genocide using the “Ten Stages of Genocide”

By Julie Kinnaird

By Dr. Jennifer Bratyanski, Providence Day School, Charlotte, North Carolina

OVERVIEW OF LESSON: This lesson will provide students with an overview of the Ten Stages of Genocide , authored by Dr. George Stanton of Genocide Watch to determine how government policies have been utilized to eradicate communities throughout world history. Students will be assigned or select an Indigenous community to research and evaluate, using the provided Ten Stages of Genocide table, government policies deployed against these groups. Finally, students will compare and contrast multiple Indigenous communities’ relationships with governmental entities around the world and across time. Students may also be encouraged to apply the Ten Stages of Genocide criteria to other groups they are interested in researching for this assignment.

Teachers are encouraged to adapt this assignment to include alternative Indigenous groups they have identified in their curriculum. This can be a culminating research assignment administered towards the end of an Imperialism Unit or the end of an academic semester (as the recent Indigenous communities can be included for evaluation such as the Uyghurs of China).

SUGGESTED GRADE LEVELS: Grades 11-12

SUBJECT: Social Studies (World History, American History, Genocide)

CORRESPONDING NATIONAL AND/OR STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA STANDARDS :

American History II:

AH2.H.3   (AH2.H.3.2 / AH2.H.3.3

• Explain how environmental, cultural and economic factors influenced the patterns of migration and settlement within the United States since the end of Reconstruction (e.g., gold rush, destruction of the buffalo, reservations, ethnic neighborhoods, etc.).
• Explain the roles of various racial and ethnic groups in settlement and expansion since Reconstruction and the consequences for those groups (e.g., American Indians, African Americans, Chinese, Irish, Hispanics and Latino Americans, Asian Americans, etc.)

WH.B.2 (ECS.WH.B.2.1 / ECS.WH.B.2.2 / ECS.WH.B.2.3

• Explain how shared values and beliefs of a culture impact national, tribal, and group identity, now and in the past.
• Explain how differences in religious, secular, racial, ethnic, and tribal group identities can cause conflict and impact societies, now and in the past.
• Explain the impact of global interaction on the development of national, tribal, and ethnic identities, now and in the past

WH.E.1 (ECS.WH.E.1.4)

• Compare how empires, groups, and nations have used economic decisions and policies to gain or maintain power, now and in the past.

WH.H.1.1 (.WH.H.1.2 / WH.H.1.3 / WH.H.1.4)

• Explain the impact the experiences and achievements of individuals and groups from various Indigenous, racial, ethnic, tribal, political, and religious backgrounds have had on historical events and current global issues
• Define ethnocentrism, stereotypes, xenophobia, racism, human rights, social justice, and social injustice.
• Identify the challenges Indigenous peoples and ethnic and tribal groups around the world have experienced as a result of colonization, imperialism, and assimilation, now and in the past

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:

• How can genocide be identified around the world and throughout history?
• How have government policies throughout history contributed to the genocide of Indigenous people?
• What actions have Indigenous communities employed to resist policies engineered to erase their cultural, religious, and governing bodies.

LESSON OBJECTIVES:

• Students will be able to understand the framework developed by Dr. George Stanton which outlines the different stages leading to genocide. Students will apply this framework to historical and contemporary instances of genocide against Indigenous peoples.
• Students will be able to examine settler colonial government policies aimed at removing or eradicating Indigenous populations from areas designated for expansion and will be able to analyze the motivations behind these policies and their impacts on Indigenous communities.
• Students will be able to explore the various strategies employed by Indigenous communities to resist erasure and maintain their territorial and cultural boundaries in the face of government incursions.
• Students will be able to compare and contrast the methods employed by state agents to remove Indigenous peoples from territories
• Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the tactics used by settler colonial governments to remove Indigenous peoples from lands
• Students will be able to summarize the arguments authors have made in a selection of primary and secondary source documents
• Students will be able to employ a variety of research methodologies to present an argumentative based thesis

BACKGROUND INFORMATION FOR THE EDUCATOR or RESOURCES TO EXPLORE FURTHER:

• Ten Stages of Genocide Genocide Watch which issues reports for various countries around the world in danger of mass killing or genocide.
• Unit XII: Teaching about Genocide . Lesson plan from Echoes & Reflections. Teaching the Holocaust. Inspiring the Classroom
• UNC Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies General information regarding the work conducted by the Center.
• What is Genocide? An overview and general education materials from the United States Holocaust History Museum.
• Where Did the Word “Genocide” Come From? from Facing History and Ourselves Genocide Education resources.
• Armenia Genocide Links – U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Introduction to the Holocaust – U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Overview – Genocide Studies Program at Yale University

SPECIFIC STUDENT STRATEGIES & ACTIVITIES: This lesson is intended to be taught over three 45-minute class blocks.

Day 1: Introduction – Ten Stages of Genocide – Introduce the Ten Stages of Genocide , by Dr. George Stanton, founding president and chairman of Genocide Watch. Teachers may use case studies from the Armenia Genocide or the Holocaust as case studies for introducing the Ten Stages of Genocide to their students.  

• Teachers should divide their students into pairs (or in small groups)
• Give each student the following handout: The Ten Stages of Genocide by Dr. George Stanton as well as the corresponding INFOGRAPHIC
• The teacher should read aloud the first stage, 1 – CLASSIFICATION to the class.
• After reading this stage aloud, ask the students the corresponding reading questions for understanding on the handout .
• The teacher should then read aloud the second stage, 2 – SYMBOLIZATION to the class.
• After reading this stage aloud, ask the students the corresponding reading questions for understanding on the handout
• Student pairs should then be instructed to read and answer the next two stages and then answer together the reading questions that follow.
• After 10-15 minutes of student collaboration, ask the students to stop. Review the questions as a class for 3 – DISCRIMINATION and 4 – DEHUMANIZATION to assess student understanding.
• Have students continue working in pairs (or in small groups).
• Stop class approximately 10-15 minutes before the end of the class and review the remaining stages as a class.
• Class Discussion Questions
• Vocabulary List
• Self-Assessment (Multiple Choice Questions with key)

Day 2: SMALL GROUP COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH – Allow class time (and homework time if necessary) for student groups to collaborate on reviewing their assigned Indigenous case study.

• Yuki (California)
• Palawa (Tasmania)
• Guarani-Kaiowa (Brazil)
• Herero and Namaqua (Namibia)
• Uyghurs (China)

2. Teachers will distribute case studies to each student group. (Note: A summative multiple choice assessment with a key appears at the end of each case study).

• Yuki Case Study
• Palawa Case Study
• Guarani-Kaiowa Case Study
• Herero Case Study
• Uyghur Case Study

3. Teachers will distribute the companion case study charts to student groups. Teachers can determine if they want each student to have a chart that corresponds to their assigned Indigenous group. Or, if one chart per group is sufficient.

• Palawa Chart
• Guarani-Kaiowa Chart
• Herero and Namaqua Chart
• Uyghur Chart

4. Students will read their Indigenous group’s case study and look for examples of the Ten Stages of Genocide. They can list those examples on their chart.

5. Students can also use the Ten Stages of Genocide Infographic as a quick reference as well.

Day 3 – Class 3: LARGE GROUP COMPARE & CONTRAST – Allow all groups to come together to compare and contrast their Indigenous community’s relationship with regional government policies.

• Student Groups will pair / share their CHARTS or as an entire class to compare and contrast their Indigenous communities.
• Teachers can use the ALL INDIGENOUS GROUP, Ten Stages of Genocide – Complete Table Handout   as a reference to make a larger class version on a chalkboard or white board and have students add information to it.

Ten Stages of Genocide Handouts

• Ten Stages of Genocide by Dr. George Stanton
• Supplementary materials : Ten Stage of Genocide (includes: Class Discussion Questions / Vocabulary List / Self-Assessment (Multiple Choice Questions)
• Ten Stages of Genocide  Infographic
• General Rubrics for Charts ( Yuki , Palawa , Guarani-Kaiowa , Herero , Uyghur )

ASSESSMENTS:

• Summative Assessments – Ten Stage of Genocide Discussion Questions / Multiple Choice Quiz (with key)
• Summative Assessments – Each case study has an accompanying multiple-choice quiz (with keys)
• Rubric – Yuki Chart
• Rubric – Palawa (Tasmania) Chart
• Rubric – Guarani-Kaiowa (Brazil) Chart
• Rubric – Herero and Namaqua (Namibia) Chart
• Rubric – Uyghurs (China) Chart

LEARNING EXTENSIONS:

• Annotated bibliography assignment – Students can create an annotated bibliography to include their research and methodologies. The assignment includes a rubric for assessment.
• HOME PAGE – Video introduction of your website (no longer than 2 minutes in length)
• Second PAG E Background information on the Genocide(s) being discussed. Must include a timeline that the student has created and images (if available) that are captioned by the student and a reference source.
• Third PAGE : Personal written reflection regarding the Ten Stages of Genocide and the research process. Page should also include photos and screen captures of your research journey as well.
• Fourth PAGE : Annotated Bibliography

REFERENCES:

Black War: Australian History.  Britannica . Retrieved March 12, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-War

“Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots” China’s Crimes against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims. Mills Legal Clinic Stanford Law School. Human Rights Watch. April 19, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2024, from https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting

Case Studies. Genocide Studies Program. Yale University. Retrieved April 29, 2024 from https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies

Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies. Retrieved April 29, 2024, from  https://globalstudies.charlotte.edu/center-holocaust-genocide-human-rights-studies/

German-Herero Conflict of 1904–07. Britannica . Retrieved March 12, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/German-Herero-conflict-of-1904-1907

Harman, Kristyn. Explainer: The Evidence for the Tasmanian Genocide. The Conversation. January 17, 2018. Retrieved March 12, 2024, from https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-evidence-for-the-tasmanian-genocide-86828

Hitchcock, Roberto and Melinda Kelly.”Reconciliation between Germany and Namibia: Towards Reparation of the First Genocide of the 20th Century”, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs .12 October 2021. Retrieved March 12, 2024, from https://www.iwgia.org/en/news/4538-reconciliation-between-germany-and-namibia-towards-reparation-of-the-first-genocide-of-the-20th-century.html

Introduction to the Holocaust. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved April 29, 2024 from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust

Ioris, Antonio Augusto Rossotto. Genocide Today: The Guarani-Kaiowa Struggle for Land and Life. Fourth World Journal . Vol. 23, N1. pp.50-62. Retrieved March 13, 2024, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372553275_Genocide_Today_The_Guarani-Kaiowa_Struggle_for_Land_and_Life

Ioris, Antonio Augusto Rossotto. Research Brief: The Ongoing Genocide of South America’s Guarani-Kaiowa. International Association of Genocide Scholars . November 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2024, from https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/IAGS_Ioris_Nov21.pdf

Madley, Benjamin. Patterns of Frontier Genocide 1803–1910: the Aboriginal, Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia. Journal of Genocide Research. Volume 6(2). June 2004, 167–192. Retrieved March 13, 2024, from  https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/patterns_of_frontier_genocide.pdf

Rappaport, Julia. “Where Did the Word “Genocide” Come From?” Facing History Facing Ourselves . November 3, 2014. Retrieved April 29, 2024, from  https://www.facinghistory.org/ideas-week/where-did-word-genocide-come

Silva, Angelique. “Remembering the Forgotten Genocide of the Herero and Nama.” The Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center . Retrieved March 13, 2024, from https://holocaustcenter.jfcs.org/remembering-the-forgotten-genocide-of-the-herero-and-nama/

Stanton, Gregory H. “The Ten Stages of Genocide” Genocide Watch. 1996. Retrieved April 29, 2024, from  https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

Stanton, Gregory H. “The Ten Stages of Genocide.” The Genocide Education Project. 1998. Retrieved April 29, 2024 from https://genocideeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ten_stages_of_genocide.pdf

The Armenian Genocide (1915-1916): Overview. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved April 29, 2024 from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-armenian-genocide-1915-16-overview

The Targeting of Uighur Muslims in China. Facing History Facing Ourselves. February 4, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2024, from https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/targeting-uighur-muslims-china

The Ten Stages of Genocide Infographic. Holocaust Memorial Trust. Retrieved April 29, 2024 from https://www.hmd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Genocide-poster-A3-landscape_updated-July-2020.pdf

Unit XII: Teaching about Genocide. Echoes & Reflections. Teaching the Holocaust. Inspiring the Classroom. Retrieved April 29, 2024, from  https://echoesandreflections.org/unit-12/?state=open#content

What is Genocide?  United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retried April 29, 2024, from https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/learn-about-genocide-and-other-mass-atrocities/what-is-genocide

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As a brutal genocide raged around her, Josephine smuggled 12 people to safety

Juana Summers

Tinbete Ermyas

Josephine Dusabimana says she rescued 12 people during the Rwandan genocide. Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR hide caption

Josephine Dusabimana says she rescued 12 people during the Rwandan genocide.

LAKE KIVU, Rwanda — To be clear, there is nothing funny about genocide. Which is why it is particularly disconcerting to hear Josephine Dusabimana laugh out loud, repeatedly, as she recounts the events that took place in her Rwandan village on the shore of Lake Kivu in 1994.

Over 100 days almost a million people were killed in one of the worst genocides in modern history.

As Dusabimana recounts the events, she smiles often at little details. You can see her big, crooked grin. At times, when she remembers a close call, or a moment of humor in a time of incredible tragedy, she laughs.

Maybe this explains Dusabimana's courage — she finds joy in the face of evil.

In this Rwandan village, survivors and perpetrators of the genocide live side by side

A common narrative of the Rwanda genocide is that there were killers, there were victims, and there were bystanders. The victims, by and large, were from the Tutsi ethnic minority. The killers, for the most part, came from the Hutu majority — some were formally in the military, but many were part of paramilitary organizations called the interahamwe .

In 1994, refugees and a soldier walk in the foothills of Lake Kivu on a route between Gisenyi and Ruhengeri, in Rwanda. Thierry Orban/Sygma/Getty Images hide caption

In 1994, refugees and a soldier walk in the foothills of Lake Kivu on a route between Gisenyi and Ruhengeri, in Rwanda.

Dusabimana is a Hutu and she was a helper. She risked her life, and the life of her family, to help Tutsi men, women and children escape the country, as hundreds of thousands were killed in a matter of weeks.

"During all genocides, we see people who stand up and who say, I will not commit violence against my neighbor and, in fact, I'm going to try to help save them because I believe this is wrong," says Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira, a genocide forecaster at The Ohio State University.

Dusabimana's actions were incredibly risky. Based on hundreds of interviews, Nyseth Nzitatira says the decision to rescue was not to be taken lightly: "Your whole family could be killed if you were found out as someone who was rescuing."

In April of 1994, Dusabimana was living in a Rwandan village, in a two-room house with her husband and children. "Life wasn't great," she remembers. Her family farmed beans and sorghum. They were poor.

Most historians mark the start of the genocide with the April 6 downing of the plane of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana. Dusabimana said she was so poor they didn't have a radio, so she wasn't aware of anything until the morning of April 7. Then, government soldiers from a nearby military barracks began to burn Tutsi houses.

Most historians mark the start of the genocide in Rwanda with the April 6 downing of the plane of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana. Refugees are seen here in 1994. Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images hide caption

She saw one man who needed her help. She was quick to take him into her home. He asked her for something to drink, but she had nothing. On her way to the market, she spotted another man — another Tutsi — who needed help. So, one became two.

Interview highlights

His story inspired 'hotel rwanda.' now he's speaking out against the government.

And while it was incredibly risky to interfere – many Hutus were labeled as Tutsi sympathizers and killed – Dusabimana believes her poverty shielded her from suspicion. "Because we were poor, no one suspected that we could hide someone," she says.

But Dusabimana had a problem: she didn't know what her husband would say when he came home and found two Tutsi men hiding there. Before he walked through the door, she tried to catch him off guard.

"So I said, 'Did you know that Pierre and Fidel came to see you?' Just to get him confused. And because he was afraid as well, he pushed them into a room and shut the door," she said. Now her challenge was to get the men out of her house and to safety without being spotted.

Dusabimana lived on Lake Kivu, a massive body of water that defines part of the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some of the lake's islands represented the safety of a neighboring country. But they were easily an eight-hour canoe trip away. And she had no boat.

A cousin had a canoe, but it would cost her. And she had no money. So she found someone who could write – Dusabimana was illiterate – and asked them to draft a contract: I, Dusabimana, will give you my goats for your canoe. That night, she snuck the men to the lakeshore and sent them off in the canoe, she hoped, to safety.

When Dusabimana saw someone who needed to be rescued, she said she did whatever she could to try to save them. Jacques Nkinzingabo for NPR hide caption

When Dusabimana saw someone who needed to be rescued, she said she did whatever she could to try to save them.

A week later: a similar story. Dusabimana says a Tutsi man with two daughters came to her. Again she hid them against her husband's wishes. Her husband told her: "I don't want you to bring Tutsis here — you're putting our lives in danger!"

She was defiant: "I made the decision to save people. I don't care if they kill us or not."

But again, she had no money and no boat. So she checked the lake.

"The problem with the lake," she recalls, "is that it was full of dead bodies. But when I was there, I saw a metal canoe."

She told her husband she found a solution: she could steal the canoe and give it to the man with his children. They would have a shot at freedom and her husband wouldn't worry for the family's safety.

However, the canoe was chained up, and it belonged to a genocide perpetrator in the village.

"Great, now you found a boat and you found someone to kill you," she recalls her husband telling her, before letting out a big belly laugh.

After dark, Dusabimana launched her plan. She took her children and went to the lake. She told them, "pretend that you're swimming" and "make noise in the water" as a distraction.

Violence in eastern Congo has displaced millions. Some end up at this camp

While one of them splashed in the water, another one was cutting the chain.

Her first child sawed, then her second, but the chain was too strong. So Dusabimana took a turn.

"I cut once, and the chain broke," she said.

That same night, she went back home. She gave the man and his two daughters the paddle and led them to the metal canoe. She tried to motivate the girls, telling them, you're strong enough to paddle across the lake.

If they didn't make it by morning, they'd be spotted and killed.

"I didn't really have anything to feed them, but I had soybeans," she recalls. "So I gave them soybeans and said, 'Eat the soybeans and you can drink the water in the lake.'" They prayed together and she let them go.

Over and over this story repeated itself. A woman and her baby. A young boy. When Dusabimana saw someone who needed to be rescued, she said she did whatever she could to try to save them. Risking her own life every time.

Some did not survive, but all told, she says she saved 12 lives during the spring of 1994.

Some of them she remains in touch with. They sought her out after the genocide. Some have given her cows as a way of repaying her for the un-repayable.

Thousands of abandoned machetes collect at the border of Rwanda and Tanzania. David Turnley/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images hide caption

Dusabimana says she got her strength, her courage, from God. Thinking about the alternative, she lets out another enormous laugh.

"I would be happy to see those killers today," she says. "They killed people thinking that afterwards life will be normal. And now how are they?"

Asked again how she found the strength to do what she did, Dusabimana dismisses the question: "I was asking myself. 'Why are these people just killing like criminals?'"

"Seeing someone – a baby, an old man – be killed for nothing ... I don't want to be like [those killers]."

Bill Clinton and other leaders join Rwandans in marking 30 years since their genocide

The blood-letting that swept Rwanda in 1994 was remarkable for its speed and familiarity. Neighbors killed neighbors in close, brutal ways. Clubs, machetes and garden hoes were common weapons. Some killers targeted their own family members.

For Dusabimana, that proximity made the violence all the more unimaginable. She says that as long as she could remember, her family has lived alongside Tutsis. They were friends, she says, "and sometimes there was even intermarriage."

A young Rwandan girl walks through Nyaza cemetery outside Kigali, Rwanda in November 1996 where thousands of victims of the 1994 genocide are buried. Ricardo Mazalan/AP hide caption

A young Rwandan girl walks through Nyaza cemetery outside Kigali, Rwanda in November 1996 where thousands of victims of the 1994 genocide are buried.

30 years removed from that violence, Dusabimana is still shocked that Hutus and Tutsis can live side by side today, after what happened.

But for her, being a rescuer was never in doubt. "It was all worth it. Now I have my dignity," she says, with a big belly laugh.

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Nicholas Kristof

From the Embers of an Old Genocide, a New One May Be Emerging

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

First they killed the adults.

“Then they piled up the children and shot them,” a witness told Human Rights Watch. “They threw their bodies into the river.”

That’s a scene from a humanitarian crisis happening now in Sudan that has been overshadowed by Gaza and Ukraine and may be about to get far worse. It’s a conflict, by some accounts a genocide, unfolding particularly in the Darfur region there.

You may remember Darfur: It was the site of a genocide two decades ago. Those atrocities galvanized a vast response, led by protesters across the United States. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, then senators, were among those who called for action, and they were joined by tens of thousands of high school and college students, plus activists from churches, synagogues and mosques working together.

While hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in Darfur at that time, the campaign also probably saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. Other countries imposed sanctions and an arms embargo, peacekeeping forces were established by the African Union and the United Nations, and the Sudanese leader who commanded the genocide was eventually ousted.

Yet today the slaughter in Darfur is resuming — and the international response is not. Most Western nations and African ones alike have been fairly indifferent.

“The inaction pales in comparison to the situation 20 years ago, when global leaders felt morally and legally obliged to act on Darfur,” Human Rights Watch noted in a new 228-page report .

Some of the same Arab forces responsible for the genocide in the 2000s are picking up where they left off. They are massacring, torturing, raping and mutilating members of non-Arab ethnic groups — the same victims as before — while burning or bulldozing their villages, survivors say.

There’s a racist element: Arab militias mock their victims as “slaves” and taunt them with racial epithets — the non-Arabs are often darker skinned. The militias seem to be trying to systematically eliminate non-Arab tribes from the area.

The Rapid Support Forces, an Arab militia associated with the worst atrocities, is on the edge of the city of El Fasher, with some 800,000 inhabitants, and may be about to sack it. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, warns that El Fasher is “on the precipice of a large-scale massacre.”

In addition, food is running out in Sudan, and gunmen have blocked aid groups from delivering food. The U.N. World Food Program reports that with 28 million Sudanese facing acute hunger, people are resorting to eating grass and peanut shells.

Cindy McCain, the leader of the World Food Program, warned that Sudan may soon constitute the world’s worst hunger crisis, risking millions of lives. “Today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten,” she added.

One gauge of the global indifference: Countries have offered only 8 percent of what the U.N. needs to support refugees who have poured out of Sudan — including almost 600,000 who have reached Chad in the last year, 88 percent of whom are women or children.

The latest crisis in Sudan is the result of a civil war that began a year ago between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, both Arab dominated. The attacks on civilians like the non-Arab tribes, amounting to collateral damage in the civil war, have been particularly vicious in Darfur.

When the non-Arab governor of West Darfur protested what he called an “ ongoing genocide ,” he was detained by the Rapid Support Forces and executed. Videos circulated that showed his corpse stripped and mutilated.

The Rapid Support Forces have been killing boys and men and raping women and girls, according to accounts from human rights monitors and survivors. In interviews with Reuters, more than 40 mothers described how their children, mostly sons, had been killed by Rapid Support Forces. One was a 2-year-old boy beaten to death in front of his mother, who was shot below the shoulder when she tried to intervene.

The Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights issued a report concluding that the atrocities meet the legal standard of genocide, adding that it is “a repeat genocide, and a repeat failure.”

“The international community has completely abandoned the non-Arab communities of Darfur facing an ongoing genocide,” said Yonah Diamond, senior legal counsel to the Wallenberg Center.

And the global response? The U.N. Security Council has passed a pair of pathetic resolutions calling for a cease-fire, most recently merely for the month of Ramadan. This week, the U.S. sanctioned two Rapid Support Forces commanders for their actions in Darfur, a move that is welcome but far from enough. It’s appalling that leading countries not only can’t muster significant action, they also can’t even manage a significant statement.

What we can do is push, as was done two decades ago, for a much greater effort to end the civil war in Sudan. That means an arms embargo and firm pressure on countries like the United Arab Emirates that (despite its denials) appear to be fueling the war with weapons shipments to the Rapid Support Forces. A U.N. report cites evidence of cargo flights several times each week carrying weapons from the U.A.E. to the Rapid Support Forces via Chad.

Sports figures, business leaders and celebrities visiting the U.A.E. should question why it chooses to provide weapons used for mass atrocities.

Leading countries can also impose sanctions on Sudanese figures and press the African Union and the African members of the Security Council to show leadership. A Security Council visit to the border with Chad would highlight the crisis, as would other high-level visits and statements.

“Darfur has been abandoned by everyone,” said Tirana Hassan, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.

So, in impoverished Darfur, the vow after every genocide of “never again” risks becoming “one more time.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “ Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life .” @ NickKristof

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Graduate Profile: Hannah Eliason, MTS '24

Message of Thanks  

While I would like to thank all of my professors at HDS, there are a couple of professors without whom getting here would not have been possible. I want to thank Mike Delaney for the countless office hours, support, and guidance throughout my entire journey of academic, personal, and vocational growth with the Religion and Public Life Program. I can wholeheartedly say that I am lucky I got to begin and end my time at this institution with such an influential figure in the humanitarian sector. I also want to thank Dr. Healan Gaston for providing me with academic spaces to research more unconventional topics like the Salem Witch Trials, the Lavender Scare, and Trump’s 2017 Muslim Ban. I would also like to thank Shaul Magid for supporting my research and vocational path in Holocaust and genocide public education and research. 

Finally, I want to thank my undergraduate advisor and mentor, Dr. Damon Berry at St. Lawrence University. My journey in religious studies began during college on the first day of Damon’s “Cults and New Religious Movements” course in the spring of 2018. Little did I know then, but this was the beginning of my trajectory towards HDS, a path I never would have considered previously. Thank you for all the short notice mentoring sessions, your unwavering support, and for being one of my biggest academic/vocational cheerleaders! 

What I Hope to Be Remembered By 

Vocationally, I hope to be remembered as an advocate for a world of just peace through my commitment to fighting social injustice against state violence and the rise of authoritarianism. On a personal level, I hope people remember me for being unapologetically myself, remembering my infectious laugh, smile, and hospitality – the watercolor memories scattered with joy, hope, solidarity, and forgiveness. 

Future Plans 

Following graduation, I plan on staying in New England for a couple of months, spending the summer reconnecting with nature and recentering my mind, body, and soul. I will continue my role as a facilitator with Amideast’s Qisasna Program (an intercultural, virtual exchange program), connecting American undergraduate students with Yemeni undergraduate students to find common ground, build podcasting skills, and foster friendships. It is my belief that programs such as these will lead peace-building efforts for future generations. 

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Research: What Companies Don’t Know About How Workers Use AI

• Jeremie Brecheisen

Three Gallup studies shed light on when and why AI is being used at work — and how employees and customers really feel about it.

Leaders who are exploring how AI might fit into their business operations must not only navigate a vast and ever-changing landscape of tools, but they must also facilitate a significant cultural shift within their organizations. But research shows that leaders do not fully understand their employees’ use of, and readiness for, AI. In addition, a significant number of Americans do not trust business’ use of AI. This article offers three recommendations for leaders to find the right balance of control and trust around AI, including measuring how their employees currently use AI, cultivating trust by empowering managers, and adopting a purpose-led AI strategy that is driven by the company’s purpose instead of a rules-heavy strategy that is driven by fear.

If you’re a leader who wants to shift your workforce toward using AI, you need to do more than manage the implementation of new technologies. You need to initiate a profound cultural shift. At the heart of this cultural shift is trust. Whether the use case for AI is brief and experimental or sweeping and significant, a level of trust must exist between leaders and employees for the initiative to have any hope of success.

• Jeremie Brecheisen is a partner and managing director of The Gallup CHRO Roundtable.

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